DC Farms is a family owned and operated greenhouse that grows 3 acres of Roma Tomatoes and 3 acres of Mini Eggplant. All of our product is sold and marketed by Mucci Farms.

DC Farms is a family-owned business that has been operated by Ernie and Mary Del Ciancio since 1972. Originally founded as a 22-acre fruit and vegetable farm, DC Farms converted to greenhouse Roma Tomato production in 1995. In 2012, DC Farms introduced Mini Cucumbers in addition to the Roma Tomatoes they had grown for years. In 2020 DC Farms switched from Mini Cucumbers to Mini Eggplant; still growing the Roma Tomatoes that began it all in 1995.

DC Farms operates under the principle of “True Family Farming”. This means that today as the business strives towards future goals in an ever-changing landscape, the passion and values handed down by two previous hard-working generations is always front and center.

DC Farms grows top quality Roma tomatoes and Mini Eggplant for Mucci Farms; with 95% of our produce ending up on Costco shelves.

Here at DC Farms, there is a tightly-knit workplace culture giving off a family atmosphere you can feel as soon as you walk in. Mike DelCiancio grew up working on the farm with his father Ernie DelCiancio and grandfather Dominic Mucci, and has grown to greatly value the collaborative nature of the workplace. The employees at DC Farms are essential in the operation of the business and spend a considerable amount of time working together on the farm. One of the most important aspects in promoting this positive workplace culture is appreciation. It is important that employees feel valued, and that they understand the importance of their contributions. When employees are thanked and rewarded for their hard work, it boosts employee morale and in turn increases overall productivity in the greenhouse.

Employees at DC Farms are treated as a part of the family, rather than simply a workforce. DC Farms shows appreciation for the workers is through taking a genuine interest in helping employees feel comfortable. Examples include gestures like home cooked meals, unique parties, or just a simple conversation over a some old school Italian pastries. This serves as a way of bringing employees together outside of the stress of the regular workday. It is important for the staff to feel connected to one another, and to the farm’s goals. Respect is also essential in the workplace and it is important to remember that respect goes both ways. At DC Farms, employees are considerate and helpful because they feel respected in the work they do.

A team is only as strong as its weakest link. When employees understand the impact that their collaborative efforts have to the overall operation, it helps them to alleviate stress and maintain focus during times of repetitive or taxing work. Establishing this team attitude is essential for Mike as he grows the family business.

Here at DC Farms, there is a tightly-knit workplace culture giving off a family atmosphere you can feel as soon as you walk in. Mike DelCiancio grew up working on the farm with his father Ernie DelCiancio and grandfather Dominic Mucci, and has grown to greatly value the collaborative nature of the workplace. The employees at DC Farms are essential in the operation of the business and spend a considerable amount of time working together on the farm. One of the most important aspects in promoting this positive workplace culture is appreciation. It is important that employees feel valued, and that they understand the importance of their contributions. When employees are thanked and rewarded for their hard work, it boosts employee morale and in turn increases overall productivity in the greenhouse.

Employees at DC Farms are treated as a part of the family, rather than simply a workforce. DC Farms shows appreciation for the workers is through taking a genuine interest in helping employees feel comfortable. Examples include gestures like home cooked meals, unique parties, or just a simple conversation over a some old school Italian pastries. This serves as a way of bringing employees together outside of the stress of the regular workday. It is important for the staff to feel connected to one another, and to the farm’s goals. Respect is also essential in the workplace and it is important to remember that respect goes both ways. At DC Farms, employees are considerate and helpful because they feel respected in the work they do.

A team is only as strong as its weakest link. When employees understand the impact that their collaborative efforts have to the overall operation, it helps them to alleviate stress and maintain focus during times of repetitive or taxing work. Establishing this team attitude is essential for Mike as he grows the family business.

A tomato crop needs to be pollinated to ensure proper growth and fruit development. This is another area where DC Farms uses insects to simplify and speed up the process. Bumblebees in the greenhouse travel from flower to flower and spread pollen to ensure high crop yield and healthy growth. Hives are placed throughout the greenhouse so bumble-bees can work nearby without wandering too far from their hive. Overall, bumblebees help reduce labour costs at DC Farms, as without bumblebees pollinating the tomato crop workers would be required to hand pollinate row by row; a very expensive and labour intensive process.

Through intensive monitoring of the crop’s health during growth, DC Farms can anticipate and prepare for pest problems that can arise in the greenhouse. One of the low-tech monitoring tools used by DC Farms are the flags hanging in the tomato crop. These coloured flags help Mike and his team track any abnormalities within the greenhouse crop. By marking areas where pest population is high, or where diseases are threatening the crop, the crop protection team can monitor these areas over time and verify the results of their pest management attempts. If their initial attempts are unsuccessful, they’ll be able to watch and take other actions to protect the crop.

Mike also performs weekly data collection of all growing variables within the crop. Leaf length, growth per week, flower size - just to name a few - are collected on a weekly basis to help monitor growing trends. This allows Mike to read and steer the crop in the best direction possible.

Another common monitoring technique is the sticky, yellow (or blue) insect tape that can be seen hanging above the mini cucumber crop. This sticky tape is important to the monitoring program as it captures insects within the greenhouse for both control and identification. The tape is hung throughout the greenhouse, so the grower can estimate pest populations, using data from the different sampling points.

One of the most important crop monitoring/crop control technologies in place on DC Farms is the Priva Greenhouse Controls System which allows for precise tailoring of many greenhouse inputs. The Priva system provides ongoing monitoring and adjustments of important crop inputs. For example, Mike can monitor and adjust CO2 levels in the greenhouse to ensure that the plants are receiving exactly the amount of CO2 required for optimal growth. Mike can also adjust the amount of light and water that the crop is receiving – along with the composition of nutrients within this fertigation water. This means the team at DC Farms can follow a “recipe” for healthy plants and ensure that their crop is receiving exactly what it needs to grow. The Priva Greenhouse Controls System allows growers and their crop management team to passively monitor many variables within the greenhouse (climate, air composition, energy use, etc.). Because of these capabilities, this information is readily available for the crop management team to interpret; without needing to gather the data or constantly be measuring important variables. This system data can be accessed remotely, so Mike and his team can check in on the status of the crop from anywhere with an internet connection via Priva’s mobile application. The Priva Greenhouse Controls System lets growers schedule repeating tasks, so activities like watering the crop or adding CO2 to the greenhouse can be done automatically. This leaves growers less tied to the greenhouse overall, as the grow can be monitored remotely, and major tasks can be scheduled to occur as planned without the need of human input.

Water irrigation is of vital importance to all greenhouse operations. DC Farms is able to make very detailed changes to their nutrient feed to make sure the plant receives exactly what it needs, when it needs it. All the irrigation water is recycled by capturing the water in large holding tanks after being fed to the crop, and passing this solution through a water pasteurization unit which disinfects and cleans out 99% of harmful bacteria and viruses. This helps reduce DC Farm’s environmental impact by ensuring that this nutrient-containing water isn’t making its way into local water bodies.

Additionally, any water that can not be recycled, such as the boiler blow down water is pumped into an Evaporation Tank. The water is brought to a continuous boil until all the water has been evaporated.

DC Farms has partnered with the University of Windsor, in a study that looks at the sediment in greenhouse retention ponds, in order to understand how greenhouse production is impacting regional watersheds. This is an important study as the improper management of storm-water could impact local drinking water. A retention pond is designed to help manage storm-water and remove pollutants from the water. Letting the excess nutrients settle to the bottom, while water slowly moves off the top of the pond allows for plant life to use up these nutrients. The water discharge from retention ponds is required to be tested under the Ontario Water Resources Act for legal compliance. DC Farms’ partnership with the University of Windsor allows for a broad, in-depth analysis of it’s sediment to determine if it acts as a source or sink for nutrients. The results from the study will help DC Farms and the greenhouse community to determine best practices managing storm-water ponds, optimizing environmental preservation.

Food safety is another primary focus at DC Farms. We are compliant to the Canada GAP auditing program, demonstrating commitment to growing safe produce. Food Safety is important to our family and the families we feed, therefore we do everything we can to ensure our facility is up to the highest food safety standards. This is achieved through strict cleaning procedures and team effort and commitment towards our Food Safety Program. We pride ourselves in maintaining a clean greenhouse and packhouse. All debris is kept clean throughout the facility to assist in crop health and to eliminate any probable contaminants.

DC Farms has done multiple seed trials with Rijk Zwaan & De Ruiter Seeds. Seeds trialed included: Cucumbers, Roma, Eggplant, and various trails as requested by our marketer. We not only grow the trail seeds, we also follow the growth and production, tracking all relevant data. DC Farms is a trial house for various seed companies, testing new products and seed variants before they’re ready for commercial use/applications.

DC Farms currently has contracts in place with CENGN, Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, drives technological innovation and industry growth through our test bed, technical expertise, talent development, and partner ecosystem. This is an ongoing relationship in which DC Farms is a demo house for technology that will push innovation into the greenhouse industry.

DC Farms began demoing the e-Gro, the latest autonomous growing technology systems from Grodan back in 2018. e-Gro, is a revolutionary software platform that allows you to collect and combine the relevant data from your greenhouse and translate it into real-time insights for data-driven Precision Growing. e-Gro supports your knowledge, experience and growing strategy with real-time insights and smart recommendations based on the root zone, climate, crop and harvest data.

e-Gro. The more you know, the better you grow.

Blue Radix creates automated intelligence for almost all daily decisions and actions in greenhouses. With the continuous growth of the world population, the need for healthy food is increasing. The greenhouse horticulture business is currently scaling up on a global level. But this scale up cannot be achieved due to a lack of crop experts. We have a solution for these worldwide challenges: our algorithm-based solutions offer growers a digital brain for their greenhouse.

DC Farms has recently installed a new, state-of-the-art automated packing line for their greenhouse roma tomatoes. Benefits that comes with this automated packing line include: employee safety, increased packing efficiency, and state of the art label printer and application.

Increase in productivity that resulted after this automated packing line was installed is mainly due to the inclusion of 3 tiers of conveyor belts as opposed to the 1 tier system we used in the past. This machine can keep boxes of unpacked produce coming constantly to the packer's station and allows the employees to prepare the proper weight of roma tomatoes effortlessly.

There is less intensive labour involved for all of the employees on the packing line, as the packing line is now automated to assist the packers. The top tier/conveyor belt transports empty roma boxes to an employee to use for palatizing the final product. This means that employees can now focus on doing a final visual inspection of the packed product, rather than spending time collecting the empty boxes from each packer's station.

Overall, the new technology DC Farms installed on the roma tomato packing line saves on operating costs and allows us to operate at a faster rate than before the technology.

Here at DC Farms we grow our Roma Tomatoes and Mini Eggplant hydroponically in inert media – Rockwool.

When vegetables are grown in regular soil, they’re being grown in a living material. Due to the life in the growing media, it opens up the chance for different soil-borne diseases and pests to arise. It takes meticulous management to overcome these pest or bacteria problems, so most growers try and preemptively manage this possibility by growing in an inert media. When vegetables are grown in an inert media like rockwool or coco coir, it provides a pathogen-free growing environment.

When growing with a drip irrigation hydroponic system, there’s the ability to target the amount of nutrients and water that the plants are getting and deliver it directly to the root zone of the plant. There are many other benefits to growing hydroponically, with a few being: increased growth rate of the crops, increased yield, and less water required overall as they’re able to capture and re-circulate water more than once. Due to these benefits, a lot of Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers choose to grow hydroponically.

At DC Farms we take this a step further. We are always monitoring our feed and drain (leachate), as well as the Water Content (WC) of the slab to ensure that we are not using more water than needed. We are able to remotely monitor our slab water content, as well as manually test specific slabs using Grodan's GroSens MultiSensor System.

DC Farms has put in a lot of effort to try and make all employees feel welcome, relaxed, and comfortable during their time on the farm. We have installed a foosball table, basketball net, high-speed internet, supplied soccer balls and gym equipment, purchased an arcade game and large speakers to play music; so that employees have something to do during their downtime. Without the help of international employees, the greenhouse vegetable sector wouldn’t be able to operate in its current fashion. Therefore, it’s critical to ensure these employees feel welcome and know that DC Farms is a family.